26th May 2006 Archive

The UK has had its TV services changed forever by the early introduction of a 30 channel digital terrestrial service called Freeview, which has driven over eight million customers in two and a half years, and now that service will come out with a Digital Video Recorder specification using the Freeview Playback brand.

This week, Silvio Berlusconi's Italian broadcasting empire Mediaset and Europa TV finalised their agreement, set at the end of last year, to sell broadcasting infrastructure and spectrum for the Mediaset imminent launch of a DVB-H network.

I've just been at a Microsoft Identity Workshop - Exploring Digital Identity. It was a good rough and tumble session, with a lot of the (pretty well-informed) attendees asking some searching questions.

Accessibility seminars often begin with a quote by Tim Berners-Lee: "The power of the web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect." It's an old quote, but the web's inventor offered fresh ideas yesterday.

Intel's upcoming 'Conroe'-based Extreme Edition Core 2 Duo processor will ship with the model number X6800, it has emerged, courtesy of the latest roadmap leak from the chip giant. And it will be pushing the Core 2 series at the same price as current Pentium processors.

IBM recently announced details of the IBM System z9 BC. The new platform is designed with all of the key characteristics with which the mainframe is deservedly associated: namely reliability, security, availability, and flexible virtualisation.

Concerns that the work of the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) could be lost in the transfer process to SOCA, the newly formed Serious Organised Crime Agency, are clearly misplaced, if an answer to a Parliamentary question earlier this week is to be believed.

Dell has begun offering its new gaming-oriented PC design to European buyers, branding the machine the XPS 700 and equipping it with a top-end Pentium Extreme Edition processor and a pair of Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS SLI graphics cards.

HD DVD is to get region coding after all, if the DVD Forum, the industry organisation that maintains the DVD format, has its way. This week, the Forum decided to put in place a team to create a region-coding scheme for the next-generation optical disc technology.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has responded to a complaint from his wife that she'd received pornography on her 3G mobile in a manner befitting his Khmer Rouge past - by banning the technology altogether.

Mac owners peeved that Apple has only just introduced glossy notebook displays - products the rest of the laptop industry have long since adopted - have a saviour, of sorts, in the Post-it company 3M. So too do notebook users fed up of folk peering over their shoulders to sneak a peek at their screens. 3M has solved both problems with a new line of LCD privacy filters...

When it comes to targeting the highest of high volume applications markets, developers have now only one place to look, according to Rob Shaddock, corporate vice president and chief technology officer of Motorola. That place is the mobile phone and its growing range of expanded derivatives.

We're running a special survey this week for all those of you who like to get down and dirty with network equipment and would also like the chance to win a 60Gb iPod Video: the "Network Equipment 60Gb iPod Video Prize Draw Survey", as we've rather brilliantly decided to call it.

After generations of being effectively invisible to the opposite sex, physicists have finally laid down blueprints for a functioning invisibility cloak. Light or other electromagnetic radiation could be bent around objects covered in exotic materials, making it appear as though they aren't there, a team reports in Science Express.

It's a simple enough prospect: you've got a second-hand silver Ford Galaxy Ghia automatic you want to offload, so where better to get rid of it than on eBay? Here's the plan - set up auction, post nice pictures, include full details and wait for the bids to roll in.

Symantec disclosed this week that researchers have discovered a software vulnerability that could allow hackers to take remote control of a PC and that it is working to verify the hole and provide a patch.

Almost half of all police forces that have have been audited by the police database team of HM Inspectorate of Constabulary have been pulled up for duff data management, said the third report of the Bichard enquiry yesterday.